soup in juneuary

A few weeks ago, we Port­landers were pre­ma­turely vis­ited by sum­mer. It was warm and sunny and glo­ri­ous. Now our days are dark, we are expe­ri­enc­ing bib­li­cal rain and we have lapsed back into muddy win­ter weather.

I have tasted the fruits of sum­mer and I am not a happy camper.

Alas, given that I have no choice in the mat­ter, I guess I’ll just have to adapt. And con­tinue eat­ing soup.

Cur­ried Car­rot Soup

This soup is invig­o­rat­ing, sat­is­fy­ing and a delight to sniff. To smell, I mean. Lovely as it is, I would not rec­om­mend ingest­ing this soup through the nose.

In a large stock­pot, heat oil. Add onion and saute for about 2 min­utes, until it begins to soften. Add salt gin­ger and con­tinue saute­ing until onions and gin­ger are soft and fra­grant. Add curry pow­der and stir to coat onion/ginger mix­ture. Add car­rots, water and cayenne. Bring mix­ture to a low boil than lower tem­per­a­ture and sim­mer mix­ture with a lid, stir­ring often, until car­rots are ten­der and break apart eas­ily with a fork, about 25 minutes.

Using an immer­sion blender, or in batches in a stand­ing blender, puree soup mix­ture. Return to stock­pot, if using stand­ing blender, and add coconut milk and cin­na­mon. Mix to com­bine and let coconut milk heat through. Serve soup with raisins for a deli­cious fla­vor contrast.

Serves 5–6.

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7 Responses to soup in juneuary

Sorry about the weather!! I would be pissed too. It’s like 90-something degrees in Mem­phis today, so going back to win­ter weather would be a very unwel­come shock to the sys­tem. Thank god­dess for soup.

I love soup, and one that looks as deli­cious as this one would be most wel­come year round around here!
We’ve had pretty weird vari­a­tions in tem­per­a­ture over here too. Hope­fully, nicer weather will come back soon to Port­land — and as sin­cerely as I’m wish­ing this for you, I must admit that my wish is a tad self­ish, too, as I’ll be fly­ing to Port­land pretty soon…

Watched Dr. Oz a cou­ple weeks ago—in a seg­ment on mem­ory, the ben­e­fits of turmeric (one key ingre­di­ent in curry pow­der) were high­lighted!! Appar­ently, in India where curry is a daily menu item, the inci­dence of Alzheimer’s is quite low.
Looks like I’ll be suck­ing down this soup on a VERY reg­u­lar basis.

I was anx­ious to try this, so I pro­ceeded despite not hav­ing all the real ingre­di­ents. No gin­ger or coconut milk, so I used almond milk and extra cayenne. Yum! (though my mous­tache caught fire a cou­ple times–but in a good way.)

I passed the recipe along to some­one I work with. I men­tioned that it could be the base for a vari­ety of dishes—served on rice maybe or gar­ban­zos added to it. I con­fess a weak­ness for curry & garbanzos.